LIVES ANALYSIS
Lives Analysis American LIVES specializes in understanding how values and lifestyles relate to the more complex consumer decisions, such as where and why to buy a house, what kind of house to buy, or what kind of community to buy in. We also study how people choose what kinds of experiences to participate in, such as what kinds of vacations to take, where to go, and why to go. LIVES Analysis, or Lifestyles, Interests, Values, Expectations, and Symbols, is a very powerful, but complex, tool we have developed that helps us understand the market far beyond demographics or simple segmentations based on attitudes and opinions.

This is more information than some people want to deal with and it's exactly the information that others are looking for.
Why Study Values in Market Research? Values-based market research is a very powerful tool because values are not so transitory as the opinions reported in most surveys: they are part of the deep structure, or unstated premises, of peoples' actions, and are slow to change. Values are combined with lifestyles and demographics, to define subcultures: distinct ways of life that bear on product attitudes and use. Values are not individualistic and held independently of other people, quite the contrary. Values are socially reinforced in families, friendship networks, at work, at church and at play. Furthermore, people are very uncomfortable when their values are inconsistent with their lives.

In other words, there are a number of distinct values-driven subcultures in America. Their lines of cleavage often define how people get and spend money, as well as where they stand on social issues. Just look at political campaigns to see typical lines of cleavage. So this gives an excellent basis for consumer typologies. It also aids studies of the larger themes of change in American culture, which often lead to new media approaches and to new themes in advertising, or even to new kinds of advertising.

The concept of leverage is not usually found in this area, for leverage means getting out much more effect than the effort you have put in. But real leverage is what LIVES offers. Leverage means using real social groupings as part of the market segmentation, not artificial market segments based on categories that will change from survey to survey. People often use the products and services they buy, and the lifestyle that supports, to create status markers. Hence subcultures tend to be status groups as well as lifestyle and values groups. Therefore, analysis based on values gives interpretative leverage that makesricher and much more meaningful stories than the usual shallow numbers of most market research.

Knowing values gives a set of handles for finding what is important in the lives of consumers, and how those interests relate to particular products, for developing programs and strategies to speak to those interests, and for developing guidelines to coordinate the work of those who must do market positioning and campaigns: marketing, sales, media, public relations and advertising people.

Major benefits are:

  • Values, lifestyles and subcultures are stable and slow to change when they reflect real social groups, not some fictional category based on shifting desires in the marketplace.
  • Values help us see what a product or service means to consumers, and that meaning very quickly translates to vested interests of consumers and to their expectations about the future, and it also translates to symbols that speak to those interests and expectations. (That's why we call it a LIVES approach: an acronym for Lifestyles, Interests, Values, Expectations and Symbols.)

That helps us do marketing and advertising much more effectively:

  • To improve products in ways that speak to customers' values
  • To position products much more accurately in the marketplace
  • To find niche markets much more easily, and get customer loyalty
  • To target marketing and advertising campaigns much more accurately
  • To generate much better advertising copy because it goes deeper, and is better targeted
  • To instruct sales and marketing people on what really works, and on how to behave.
In the search for distinction in a crowded marketplace, clients need guiding principles for the development of large scale projects, and knowing peoples' values gives them this. We need above all to bring people back into the picture so that the values guidelines of which we speak are not only ours, but express the consumers' values as well. Consumers are beginning to settle for nothing less. Many of our clients have decided they want a better match between their values and the values that their consumers and stakeholders perceive them to be living by.

We have a very pragmatic reason for doing values analysis in market research: it works.
Values Subcultures in America Based on our research and that of Paul H. Ray, Ph.D., our Executive Vice-President, American LIVES has identified three major values subcultures in the United States today. Descriptions of these three follow:

Heartlanders are 29% of the United States and are declining in numbers. They represent the current cultural rearguard and differ among themselves by social class and ideology. They are traditional, for a more authoritarian family structure, concerned for relationships, relatively altruistic, for private enterprise, concerned about jobs and finances, xenophobic, and toward the religious right and social conservatism. The Heartland Double Conservatives define the ideological right: more middle class and both cultural and business conservatives. The rest are lower socio-economic status with many retirees and blue-collar, and are less ideological than provincial. This subculture's values and world-view are centered around a nostalgic image of the past, substituting for an Image of the Future. Politically, they range from the center to the extreme right. They have a high percentage of older Americans, with a median age of 53 years and median income of $23,750.

Moderns are 47% of the United States and are static in numbers. They represent the dominant and official culture of today, and differ among themselves by social class. They are materialistic, either secular or conventionally religious, concerned with success and status display, are cynical, and tend to worry about financial problems (even when their incomes are higher). Family concerns are more secondary. This subculture's values and world-view are validated only by day-to-day concerns. They have a wider range of social classes than the other two subcultures: at the high end are business conservatives and at the low end are more alienated moderns. There are fewer of the lowest income groups. Politically, they cover the spectrum from extreme conservatism to extreme liberalism. The median age is 39 years and income is $42,500.

Cultural Creatives are 24% of the United States and growing in numbers. They have two parts. The Core CCs have strong psychological and spiritual; interests as well as altruism, idealism, concern for relationships, strong environmentalism, and xenophilism. Their world view is validated by ideals and new views of humanity, a potential new Image of the Future. They are interested in developing artistic and cultural innovations. The Green CCs are more peripheral, with fewer spiritual or psychological concerns but relatively more political concerns that include ecology and idealism. Politically, left vs. right does not fit Cultural Creatives. Their median age is 42 years, median income is $47,500. There are noticeably more females than males, a 60:40 ratio.



Work on the Cultural Creatives
Paul H. Ray, Ph.D., Executive Vice-President of American LIVES, has extensively researched how the subcultures of values permeate all aspects of American life. In this research, he discovered the emergence of a new values subculture of Americans that he named the Cultural Creatives, which includes 1 out of every 4 American adults. This led to more research about the Cultural Creatives, a group that Dr. Ray identifies as being on the cutting edge of social change. They have a different set of values than the subcultures that have dominated America's past. They are interested in new kinds of products and services, and often respond to marketing and advertising in unexpected ways. They represent valuable new market opportunities if their needs can be met and addressed.

The February 1997 cover story of American Demographics focused on Dr. Ray's research on the Cultural Creatives, and his work has also been featured in the Utne Reader.

The Institute of Noetic Sciences and the Fetzer Institute have both been key sponsors of research on the Cultural Creatives. The Integral Culture Survey: A Study of the Emergence of Transformational Values in America, a longer description of the American LIVES Typology and its historic context, is for sale by contacting the Institute of Noetic Sciences at 415.331.5650.

For a more exhaustive analysis, look for Dr. Ray's new book, The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World, by Harmony Books. He and his co-author, Sherry Anderson Ph.D, offer an evocative portrayal of the Cultural Creatives: who they are, how they are affecting society and culture, and why we should care. You can also visit Cultural Creatives for more information.